The Unmet Healthcare Needs: Evidence from Serbia
-
Milos MITRASEVIC
,
Snezana RADOVANOVIC
,
Svetlana RADEVIC
,
Milena MARICIC
,
Ivana Zivanovic MACUZIC
,
Tatjana Kanjevac
Abstract
Background: We aimed to determine the socio-economic factors associated with unmet healthcare needs of the population aged 20 and over in Serbia.
Methods: We used data from the 2013 National Health Survey (NHS) of the population of Serbia. We focused only on the data concerning the population aged 20 and over. The final sample thus included 13,765 participants. The logistic regression was used to examine the socio-economic factors associated with unmet health care needs.
Results: According to the data obtained in this study, 26.2% of the population aged 20 and over reported unmet health care needs during the previous 12 months. The multivariate analysis shows that significant indicators of unmet healthcare needs include: gender, age, marital status, level of education, financial and employment status.
Conclusion: Females, the elderly and those with the lowest levels of education and household income, as well as those who are divorced and unemployed are at highest risk of unmet healthcare needs. Different policies and approaches should be taken into consideration when it comes to vulnerable population groups in order to reduce the currently existing gaps to a minimum and provide more equal opportunities for health care to all citizens.
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28. Hwang J (2018). Understanding reasons for unmet health care needs in Korea: what are health policy implications? BMC Health Serv Res, 18:557.
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30. Tumin D, Menegay M, Shrider EA, et al (2018). Local Income Inequality, Individ-ual Socioeconomic Status, and Unmet Healthcare Needs in Ohio, USA. Health Equity, 2(1):37-44.
31. Hurley J, Jamal T, Grignon M, Allin S (2011). The relationship between self-reported unmet need for health care and health care utilization. Hamilton, Ontario, Canada: McMaster Research Data Centre Research Paper.
2. Allin S, Masseria C (2009). Unmet need as an indicator of health care access. Euro-health, 15(3):7-10.
3. Levesque JF, Pineault R, Robert L, et al. Unmet health care needs: a reflection of the accessibility of primary care services? Montreal: Health and Social Services Agency of Montreal, National Public Health Institute of Quebec; 2007.
4. Pappa E, Kontodimopoulos N, Papado-poulos A, et al (2013). Investigating un-met health needs in primary health care services in a representative sample of the Greek population. Int J Environ Res Public Health, 10(5): 2017-27.
5. Cavalieri M (2013). Geographical variation of unmet medical needs in Italy: a multi-variate logistic regression analysis. Int J Health Geogr,12: 27.
6. Karanikolos M, Kentikelenis A (2016). Health inequalities after austerity in Greece. Int J Equity Health, 15: 83.
7. Kertesz SG, McNeil W, Cash JJ, et al (2014). Unmet need for medical care and safety net accessibility among Birmingham's homeless. J Urban Health, 91(1): 33-45.
8. Jain AK, Obare F, RamaRao S, Askew I (2013). Reducing unmet need by support-ing women with met need. Int Perspect Sex Reprod Health, 39(3):133-41.
9. National Health Care for the Homeless Council (2012). HCH quality leaders: a case study. Nashville, TN: National Health Care for the Homeless Council.
10. Ji Hye Lim (2017). Regional Disparity and Factors Influencing Unmet Medical Needs: A Study Based on the Sixth Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2015). Osong Public Health Res Perspect, 8(5): 295–301.
11. Detollenaere J, Hanssens L, Vyncke V, et al (2017). Do We Reap What We Sow? Ex-ploring the Association between the Strength of European Primary Healthcare Systems and Inequity in Unmet Need. PLoS One, 12(1):e0169274.
12. Lu L, Zeng J, Zeng Z (2017). What limits the utilization of health services among china labor force? analysis of inequalities in demographic, socio-economic and health status. Int J Equity Health, 16:30.
13. Eurostat. Health Care Database. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/health/data/database
14. Republic of Serbia Ministry of Health (2015). Law on Personal Data Protection Off. https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4b5718f52.pdf
15. Li J, Shi L, Liang H, et al (2018). Urban-rural disparities in health care utilization among Chinese adults from 1993 to 2011. BMC Health Serv Res, 18(1):102.
16. Global Health Expenditure Database, 2016. https://apps.who.int/nha/database/ViewData/Indicators/en
17. Law on Health Insurance. Official Gazette. Republic of Serbia no 107/2005, 109/2005, 57/2011, 110/2012, 119/2012, 99/2014, 123/2014, 126/2014, 106/2015 i 10/2016, Belgrade; 2015; Serbian. https://www.kg.ac.rs/eng/health_care.php
18. Healthcare law. Official Gazette. Republic of Serbia no 57/2011, 107/2012. Belgrade; 2012; Serbian. https://www.paragraf.rs/propisi/zakon_o_zdravstvenoj_zastiti.html
19. Levesque JF, Pineault R, Hamel M, et al (2012). Emerging organisational models of primary healthcare and unmet needs for care: insights from a population-based survey in Quebec province. BMC Fam Pract, 13:66.
20. Lim JH (2017). Regional Disparity and Fac-tors Influencing Unmet Medical Needs: A Study Based on the Sixth Korea Na-tional Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2015). Osong Public Health Res Per-spect, 8(5):295-301.
21. Pineault R, Borgès Da Silva R, Provost S, et al (2017). Do Gender-Predominant Pri-mary Health Care Organizations Have an Impact on Patient Experience of Care, Use of Services, and Unmet Needs? In-quiry, 54:46958017709688.
22. Kim YS, Lee J, Moon Y, et al (2018). Unmet healthcare needs of elderly people in Ko-rea. BMC Geriatr, 18:98.
23. Kim J, Kim TH, Park EC, Cho WH (2015). Factors influencing unmet need for health care services in Korea. Asia Pac J Public Health, 27(2):NP2555-69.
24. Papanikolaou V, Zygiaris S (2014). Service quality perceptions in primary health care centres in Greece. Health Expect, 17(2):197-207.
25. Kolasa K, Rybnik T (2012). Socio-demographic determinants of inequity of access to health care in Poland in 2011. based on social diagnosis. Przegl Epidemiol, 66(4):681-8.
26. Lee SY, Kim CW, Kang JH, Seo NK (2015). Unmet healthcare needs depending on employment status. Health Policy, 119(7):899-906.
27. Han KT, Park EC, Kim SJ (2016). Unmet healthcare needs and community health center utilization among the low-income population based on a nationwide com-munity health survey. Health Policy, 120(6):630-7.
28. Hwang J (2018). Understanding reasons for unmet health care needs in Korea: what are health policy implications? BMC Health Serv Res, 18:557.
29. Westin M, Ahs A, Bränd Persson K, et al (2004). A large proportion of Swedish cit-izens refrain from seeking medical care-lack of confidence in the medical services a plausible explanation? Health Policy, 68:333–344.
30. Tumin D, Menegay M, Shrider EA, et al (2018). Local Income Inequality, Individ-ual Socioeconomic Status, and Unmet Healthcare Needs in Ohio, USA. Health Equity, 2(1):37-44.
31. Hurley J, Jamal T, Grignon M, Allin S (2011). The relationship between self-reported unmet need for health care and health care utilization. Hamilton, Ontario, Canada: McMaster Research Data Centre Research Paper.
| Files | ||
| Issue | Vol 49 No 9 (2020) | |
| Section | Original Article(s) | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.18502/ijph.v49i9.4081 | |
| PMCID | PMC7898096 | |
| PMID | 33643939 | |
| Keywords | ||
| Unmet healthcare needs; Socioeconomic inequalities National health survey Serbia | ||
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. |
How to Cite
1.
MITRASEVIC M, RADOVANOVIC S, RADEVIC S, MARICIC M, MACUZIC I, Kanjevac T. The Unmet Healthcare Needs: Evidence from Serbia. Iran J Public Health. 2020;49(9):1650-1658.
